Mutual Defense Assistance Act

The Mutual Defense Assistance Act was a United StatesAct of Congress signed by President Harry S. Truman on 6 October 1949. For US Foreign policy, it was the first U.S. military foreign aid legislation of the Cold War era, and initially to Europe.[1] The Act followed Truman's signing of the Economic Cooperation Act (the Marshall Plan), on April 3, 1948, which provided non-military, economic reconstruction and development aid to Europe. The Act was reauthorized in 1950[citation needed], but in 1951, it and the Economic Cooperation Act were succeeded by the Mutual Security Act, and its newly created independent agency, the Mutual Security Administration, to supervise all foreign aid programs, including both military assistance programs and non-military, economic assistance programs that bolstered the defense capability of U.S. allies.[2]

President Harry S. Truman inspecting a brand new M41 Walker Bulldog Prototype Tank. The MDAA allowed a much needed revival of the US armed forces equipment modernization program.

About the same time, the Mutual Defense Assistance Control Act of 1951, also known or referred to as the Battle Act, (65 Stat. 644; 22 U.S.C. 1611 et seq.) was also passed; it banned U.S. assistance to countries doing business with the Soviet Union and was so-named after its sponsor, Representative Laurie C. Battle of Alabama.[3] Strong motivation for this 'control' act also came from export control concerns, following their tightening by the Export control Act of 1949 over Soviet advances; export controls were used for both domestic policy and later as an instrument of foreign policy. This is exemplified by the restrictions on export of certain strategic or military items to the Soviet bloc or to other countries which it felt, if permitted, would be detrimental to the foreign policy program of the US.[4] This latter motive became so strong that it brought legislation directing the President to enlist the cooperation of other nations in enacting controls on trade with the Soviet block to parallel those of the United States. The benefits of the various economic and military aid programs were to be withheld from non-cooperating nations.[5] The act covered a wide range of materials needed for the production of weapons, and was especially focused on anything that could aid atomic weapons research and construction.[6]

As the Cold War developed, these acts were part of the American policy of containment of Communism. They importantly provided defense assistance to any ally that might be attacked by the Soviet Union or one of its allies, while other programs provided non-military economic assistance. In Asia the programs expanded with the newly established MaoistPeople's Republic of China, and other areas, with the development of specific country missions, including ones in Austria (1947–50), China (1946–48), Ireland (1948–51), and Trieste (1947–52).[7]

Historical background : the World War II aftermath and the Cold War[edit]

In the euphoria of the end of World War II, western arsenals dropped down to a dangerous level of weakness and worn-out, public funds were, by priority, allocated to reconstruction. Even the US arsenal showed obvious signs of shortages and decay.[note 1]

Military officials began calling for the introduction of a new defense legislation in 1947, arguing that depleted inventories of surplus World War II-vintage armaments, piecemeal planning of new armaments and restrictions on presidential authority threatened current and future efforts to arm allied nations. New legislation became a necessity by mid‐1948 with the negotiation of the North Atlantic defense treaty and the necessity to provide military aid to strengthen the connectional defenses, having in mind a global resistance to Communist expansion of the signatories.

Truman sent a first bill to Congress on 25 July 1949, the day he ratified the North Atlantic Treaty but congressional opposition forced submission of a new legislation, which specified the recipients and the amounts of assistance. Administration planners believed the MDAA's immediate effects would be to raise the morale of friendly nations and prove US reliability and resolve to meet Communist worldwide threats. The MDAA also institutionalized the concept of specific military aid programs, a result ensured by adoption of similar legislation in 1950 and an increase in annual spending on military aid to $5.222 billion after the outbreak of the Korean War - the very first large scale test of the validity and practicability of the concept, if excepting the logistical support allowed to France during the Indochina War.

The successful but limited use of the new M26 Pershing tank[note 2] at the end of World War II, led the U.S. forces to believe they had the basis for a successful tank design. However, it did not meet the requirements laid forth by the Ground Forces Equipment Review Board in 1945 as the M26 still used many components of the aging M4 series. At the eruption of the Korean War, the sole readily available tank forces the United States were able to engage were small groups of light M24 Chaffees from the Japan's occupation forces. But this World War II-vintage reconnoitre tank was unable to face the soviet-made medium T34/85 tank.

The 1949's Mutual Defense Assistance Act created the "Mutual Assistance Program" concept - which turned de facto into US "Military Assistance Program" (MAP)- which made mutual security pacts and the concept of security assistance integral and intertwined elements of the western free world's doctrine of containing Soviet expansion. The MAP concept was totally different from the wartime Lend-Lease program in that it never needed refunding from the country that benefits any military assistance. Between 1950 and 1967, $33.4 billion in arms and services and $3.3 billion worth of surplus weaponry were provided under the program.

On 4 April 1949, the foreign ministers from 12 countries signed the North Atlantic Treaty at the Departmental Auditorium in Washington D.C.: Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom and the United States. Provision for enlargement was however given by Article 10 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which states that membership is open to any “European State in a position to further the principles of this Treaty and to contribute to the security of the North Atlantic area”.

American military support to France's rearmament lasted well into the 1950s[citation needed], the French receiving furthermore equipment including M46 Pattons, F-84 Thunderjet, etc.[citation needed] but the divergence between the United States and the Anglo-French alliance during the Suez crisis was to have decisive consequences on France-NATO relationships.[clarification needed] Whereas the damage done to Anglo-American relations was quickly repaired, in the case of France, the situation remained more complex. France started to express reservations about the direction of Allied policy and US leadership and, following his election as President in 1958, General Charles de Gaulle, in particular, made clear his dissatisfaction with aspects of this US prominent role, as well as, more specifically, with NATO's nuclear policy and integrated command structure.[citation needed] Although France was one of the very founding members of the Atlantic Alliance, President Charles de Gaulle withdrew France from NATO’s military structure in 1966 in protest over American dominance of the Atlantic Alliance.

This film was shot on location in Czechoslovakia in 1968. At that time, Czechoslovakia was already seen by soviet Russia as becoming too liberal and unorthodox in its political values.[clarification needed] Moscow argued about the presence of World War II-vintage US military equipment - M24 Chaffee tanks, GMC trucks and other military antiquities used as accessories for the making of the movie - as evidence of a secret pro-Czech anti-Soviet MAP among other political excuses to justify the military "coup" the Soviet authorities planned against Prague. Therefore, while the movie was being filmed, the USSR invaded the country, MIGs overheading the set whereas the Russians claimed that American spies were among the cast and crew ... pure propaganda that turned totally fallacious.[citation needed]

On 8 September 1951, the United States and Japan signed the Mutual Security Treaty, which stationed U.S. troops on Japanese soil for the defense of Japan following the eruption of the Korean War. On 8 March 1954, both countries signed the Mutual Defense Assistance Agreement (activated on 1 May 1954), focusing on defense assistance. It allowed for the presence of U.S. armed forces in Japan for the purpose of peace and security while encouraging Japan to take on more responsibility for its own defense, rearming in a manner suited for defensive purposes.

As early as the 1820s and the end of the Spanish main-mise in Central and South America, serious social divisions in Latin American societies, combined with the pressure of foreign financial interests and the autocratic - if not dictatorial - character of the local governments resulted in constant internal civil troubles - the guerrillas.[citation needed] In the 1930s, those insurrectionist movements turned more and more openly to revolutionary subversives attempts to install Marxist forms of governments, the local armed forces usually trying to deter any form of democratic solution to the social problems by coups d'état and pronunciamentos followed by harsh dictatorships supported by US Companies - what in turn eventually still worsened the situation and increased anti-US agitation or feelings.[citation needed]

From the end of the Second World War and the beginning of the Cold War, the United States, having important and growing strategic and economic interests in the area - and especially in Central America -, opted to military support the pro-US governments, even ones with dictatorial forms.[citation needed] This attitude was still reinforced[dubious– discuss] with the Fidel Castro's victory in Cuba in January 1959, despite U.S. support to the government of Fulgencio Batista.

The MDAA caused both a great deal of friction with the non-aligned countries[citation needed] and opportunities to tighten geopolitical relations with the western free world and especially the United States.

Up to the early 1960s, the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) had a large arsenal of German equipment, planes and armor captured during the war,[citation needed] western-allies equipment that had been donated by the USA and Great Britain during the war, as well as Soviet equipment.[citation needed]

Despite Josip Broz Tito's firm adherence to communism, because of the ideological[note 3] and personal conflict with Joseph Stalin, the Soviet Union - and thereafter all the Warsaw Pact's pro-Soviet governments - denounced his treaty of friendship with Yugoslavia on September 27, 1949. For sometime it seemed to be a serious threat and a real danger of an intervention of the country by his former allies, so Yugoslavia accepted readily the American/British offer of assistance. There was also even discussions at that time on its possible inclusion into North-Western Alliance. It can be said by now that Yugoslav armed forces received during this very period standard NATO military equipment and arms - such as the F-86 and F-84 Thunderjet jet fighters or M36 Jackson and M18 Hellcat tank-destroyers.[citation needed] After Stalin's death and the political and ideological pacification with Soviet Union, Yugoslav Peoples Army later exclusively imported part of their equipment from the USSR when not constructing it itself.

After General Charles de Gaulle argued about the US within the NATO Alliance and following the unconditional support entrusted by the US Governments to dubious right-wing[weasel words] military regimes in the name of Communist Containment policy - such as the Spanish Franco and Portuguese Salazar's dictatorships [10] or the Greek Regime of the Colonels,[11][12] in the wake of the Vietnam War protests, democratic left-wing public opinion in the USA and in Europe raised the controversial question of the MAPs being used as instruments of some form of covert ultra-conservative political US imperialism.[13][weasel words] The quite enigmatic role played by the CIA within the frame of those programs also fed the controversy,[dubious– discuss][citation needed] which reached its peak with the overthrow and murder of Chilean President Salvador Allende after an alleged CIA-sponsored military coup in 1973 - a controversy still not closed.[14]